FMM Comes to Chicago!

Yesterday was a big, big day: I met a blogger friend, in Chicago. Wait till you hear!

Well, first, I drove behind this guy on I-57, for as little time as possible, as a mattress through my windshield would have held me up bigtime. I zoomed around it, amused at the unconcerned driver, merrily munching on french fries, unaware that he was close to being airborn.



Oh, God, that's all boring, I can't take it anymore: I got to meet Fightin' Mad Mary yesterday!

Whoo Hoo! Mary's in Chicago on business for the next 3 weeks, and she was nice enough to fly in a day early just so we could get together for dinner.

For those of you that don't know, Mary's a Hollywood girl, and her blog is chock full of consumer reports, stories of crazy neighbors, celebrity sightings in Runyan Canyon, restaurant reviews...oh, there's something for everyone there!

Mary also, if you remember, rubs elbows with a few TV & entertainment folks, and she managed to finagle glossies of Playboy Models for me to send to Brian, thus locking in my Mother of the Year award with soldiers, worldwide.



She recently ran a post called Comment for A Cause, sending $2 for every comment she received to our Toys for Troops Fundraiser. She received 64 comments.

Oh, just go read for yourself! Without further adieu, I give you Fightin' Mad Mary:


Yayyyyy! We started out the day at Uno's, for her first deep-dish pizza. Can you believe it? Her summary of the pizza was that it was a lot like a casserole, in a crust. She was so totally on the money there; I will never see deep-dish pizza in the same light again.

After lunch, we hit up Sephora. I'm telling you, Mary is THE person you need to take to Sephora with you. I watch her blog for makeup tips anyway, and baby, she knows her way around the cosmetics aisle.

She showed me how to make my eyes pop with eye-bright pencil stick.

She made me put blue glitter on my eyelids.

Ok, that was a lie; she told me not to put the blue glitter on my eyelids, but I insisted that I'd look like Cher if I did. Poor Mary had to spend the rest of the afternoon blinded by the reflection from my disco-esque eyelids.

We walked to Millenium Park, and took pictures of the bean (aka Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Cloud Gate).



Can you see us in this shot? Don't feel bad, we both flailed our arms over our heads from here and couldn't find our own reflections.

We checked out the Crown Fountain. I'd been here before, but did not remember seeing the faces on the wall, at all. I wonder if the faces were broken last I was here. Anyway, Mary knew more about them than I did. In fact, I answered a lot of her Chicago questions with "I have no idea."



We watched kids cool off, for awhile:


And took one another's pictures in front of this sculpture:

And we had coffee, and watched street artists, and went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, before our time was up and I had to return home.

I left feeling like I'd spent 4 hours with an old friend. There was never a lull in the conversation, as we filled each other in on the gaps we leave in our blogs, and talked about our families, our lives, our plans for the future.

And I'm blown away, as I often am, these days, that I manage to continually encounter people that bother. Mary's done things for my kid. She's rallied for our cause. We live 2000 miles apart, and she's done all that, without ever meeting us, or exchanging even a phone call. I can only shake my head in wonder.

I have a list of "Friends I Haven't Met Yet," people I've tagged up to through this blog.

I'm so happy to scratch Mary off that list.


(And p.s.: Next time she's wearing the blue glitter.)